u/cambeiu

Interestingly enough, Krugman is not viewed as an austerity advocate.

Just got handed a miniPC rocking an ancient Atom Z3795 SoC with 2GB of RAM and running Windows 10.

Instead of sending to eWaste processing I wanted ideas as to what games can I can try to play with it. Maybe pre-2005 3D games that can run on Windows 10? What do you guys think?

Brazil's Supreme Court is on the brink of an internal "civil war". Some justices are deeply involved in the largest corruption scandal the Brazil has ever faced, while others appear to make politically based rulings to protect their former patrons. This is arguably the biggest institutional crisis facing the country since it returned to democracy over four decades ago. And all of it is taking place just 3 weeks before presidential elections where Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro are virtually tied on the opinion polls. According to the same polls, 42% of Brazilian voters hate them both with equal intesity.

Why stop there?

Colorado, Nevada, Montana and Florida all have Spanish based names.

Same with Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, El paso, Fresno, etc...

Rename them all, I guess, since we are at it.

>"Theresa Long is one of a few advisers to the health secretary examining whether the government covered up vaccine side effects."

The idea of a "cover up" is absurd, since US Troops took the exact same vaccines as billions of other people worldwide.

Countries as diverse as Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, China, Portugal, Vietnam, Peru, Chile and South Korea have over 85% COVID vaccination rates and none of these countries reported any abnormal death rates due to the vaccine.

So unless there is a global conspiracy involving governments not only from very different continents, but from very distinct geopolitical alignments, COVID vaccines are demonstrably safe.

Bessent's attempt to bail out the Yen has obviously failed.

In order to defend the Yen, the BoJ will have to sell US treasuries, which will drive US Treasury yields higher.

Japan's 200% debt-to-GDP ratio did not matter for a long time, until it finally did.

Even families making more than US$700K a year don't want more than 2 kids. Population replacement rate requires an average fertility rate of 2.1 children per couple.

People want simple solutions to this problem, such as higher pay, or childcare subsidies, or more parental leave. Those things are nice and might encourage families to have a child or two, but it does not address the fundamental issue: Even if you have a good job, a good home, plenty of family time, for most people there are no good reasons to have more than 1 or 2 kids.

With just 1 or 2 kids people get to experience parenting, which is what they want. Any number of children beyond that offers an increased burden of time, attention and stress without making the parenting experience significantly more enjoyable. The more kids you have, the less time is available to you for hobbies, travel or entertainment in general, even if you have plenty of money.

In the particular case of Singapore, as in many other countries, even if they manage to increase birthrates from the current 0.8 all the way up to 2.1, their demographic pyramid is already so inverted that it will not be enough.

Global Turbine delivery backlogs now extends as far back as 2031, as 36.3 GW data center demand surge for 2027 outpaces combined annual manufacturing output of all three major turbine makers.

This issue could impact naval and aircraft markets also, as power generating turbines share some components and materials with their naval and aerospace counterparts.

>If we amortize the development costs with the ongoing subsidy, European taxpayers have put more than 100 million euros into each launch before the customer pays the rocket’s operator, Arianespace, anything.

Very tough to compete with SpaceX and the Chinese under these circumstances.

>With frontrunners Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro both facing rejection rates above 50%, the election will hinge on a narrow pool of independent voters.

It is truly sad that in the presidential election later this year, Brazilians have only 2 realistic choices:

1. A highly polarizing 80 year old center-left politician seeking a 4th term, who many see as a man embroiled in past corruption scandals, carrying old ideas, old ideologies that are no longer relevant in the current world and that are out of step with the aspirations of most citizens.
2. The son of another highly polarizing demagogue and would be dictator who is viewed as little more than a puppet of his father, who is now serving a 25 year sentence and is barred from politics.

Although both candidates have large, loyal, almost fanatical bases (some of them even show up here from time to time), they are not large enough to get them elected. Since most independent voters dislike both, what will decide the election is which one they hate more.

Brazil, the country with the second largest nominal GDP in the Americas, and a founding member of the BRICS block has already made its choice.

Brazil Joins China-Led AI Body WAICO as US Stays Out

What annoys me about such articles is the framing of demographic crisis as a "Western" or "rich country" problem. It is not. It is an issue that is affecting every single nation that is considered middle income or above, worldwide. That is pretty much everyone except sub-Sharan Africa and parts of central Asia. And even in those countries where fertility rates remain high, the down trend is still very evident.

Countries like Iran, Thailand, Brazil, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Mauritius are seeing their fertility rates implode as much as any wealthy European nation. This is relevant because it shows that while immigration can potentially alleviate the demographic crisis in rich countries, it can't solve it, because the countries that serve as the source of immigrants will also run out of people eventually.

I also think it is important to frame the issue under the right optics. The core point here is not wanting more people on Earth to sustain "infinite growth". It is not that we need to be 10 billion, 20 billion people in order to prosper. We don't. Maybe we would be fine if we reverted back to say...2 or 3 billion people globally. The problem we are facing is the pace of the decline. When birthrates fall off a cliff, as we are seeing now, you end up with a massively large old population that needs to be supported by an ever declining young population.

The social model of a large number of young people working and caring for a small portion of old people is as old as humanity itself.

An inverted demographic pyramid will break any societal model we are familiar with, from modern capitalism to a communal hunter-gatherer society and everything in between.

We don't know how to run a society with more retirees than working people, or with more sickly people than healthy ones. In the entire history of humanity, this scenario has never happened.

EDIT: "The ultra wealthy could pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly."

I really wish the above was true, as I have no problem with taxing the ultra-wealthy. But unfortunately the scale of the problem is much, much bigger.

Let's take Germany as an example. According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), approximately €751.2 billion was spent in 2025 on social benefits. (source)

The top 3 most valuable German mega corporations (Siemens, SAP and Allianz) combined are worth less than that. Meaning that even if the German government was capable of seizing the assets of these companies and magically turn them into cash, that would cover its CURRENT social benefit expenses for about a year. Never mind future expenses as population ages.

Same is true for virtually all developed countries.

So no, the " ultra wealthy could not pay for it ten times over if we just taxed them correctly." I would be great if we could tax our way out of this pickle, but unfortunately we cannot.

Ethanol powered cars are prevalent in Brazil and the electric charging network is still very under-developed. So BYD is tackling the issue by locally producing plug-in hybrids that can be powered by ethanol.

This year's production on the BYD Brazilian plant is expected to be 180K vehicles, with plan to ramp up production to up to 600K/year vehicles within the next 4 years. Part of the production will go to the Brazilian market, part of the production will go to Mercosur and other developing nations.

What is particularly interesting is that by nominal GDP, Brazil is the 2nd largest economy in the Americas and it was until not very long ago, neck deep into the United State's political and economical orbit. However, over the past several years Brazil has shifted alignment towards their BRIC partners, specially China, who has now eclipsed the US as Brazil's single largest trade partner.

It is quite ironic that the current Brazilian BYD plant used to be a Ford facility, until the US based company closed up shop and left Brazil completely.

If Trump's aspiration is to revive the Monroe Doctrine, the loss of US power and influence in Brazil shows that the plan had a very rough start.

I think it is important to point out that Brazil is Argentina's single largest trade partner and both countries have tightly integrated supply chains.

The Brazilian state of Sao Paulo alone has the same GDP as the entire country of Argentina and Brazil's most valuable publicly traded company is worth more than the entire Argentine stock market, so the economic importance of the trade relationship between the two countries is not the same. Therefore it is no surprise that Milei's political stunt did not go down well in Argentina.